A daily dose of odds and sods, some interesting, some bizarre, some funny, some thought provoking items which I have stumbled across the web. All to be taken with a grain of daily salt!!

Sunday, June 8

Innovation and Eastern Europe

Saw this note and was reminded of a lecture that I gave on outsourcing (will be giving a related one here) in conjunction with this firm at the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists. The lecture was on outsourcing and offshoring to Eastern Europe and our experiences with that whole animal. It is quite an interesting area to discuss.

The fact that the blogger is comparing with Israel is quite interesting, but they should be careful of what they ask for. In my experience, copying basic principles such as democracy, education, vocational training is fine, but when higher reaches of human civilisation are copied (such as employment, entrepreneurship, economic development) willy nilly, then problems occur.

But I liked what the Czech have done with the eco system of universities, software companies, politics and bureaucracy. Very hard to replicate and scale but very good indeed. The Israel model of innovation is different, mind you, it is based on a different model of education and value generation. But that's for another essay.